is a sound like none other, coming from Whom,
from Where, Ann cannot say, either rolling across the PlainsEast to Westor
echoingear to earinside her own addled brain r e s o u n d i n g l y
a Doppler Effect, in effect, stretched unto Infinity

"A l
l a h
u - a
k b a
r"

galvanizes the silence, shivers grass to
its roots, makes hair stand on end; Anns, like thistle, halos her head and
extremities, midday nap interrupted by the twice-repeated call

"A l
l a h
u - a
k b a
r"
thrice-repeated call, no mistaking it; wide awake, on her feet, Ann queries the static
Air, as if its charge were due to something corporeallightning from the heat, Wind
through sagebrush, clouds about to clash in the throes of a Summer stormbut all is
perfectly tranquil for as far as her senses reach

"A l
l a h
u - a
k b a
r"

listening

while a vacuum left by the fourth phrase l
e i s u r e l y fills: with buzzesflies on the wing again; chirpsa choir of
nearby thrushes; skittersclaws on rock where lizards recommence their search for
grub worms

tasting

soot, the ash from Mornings fire
adheres to gums and cavities in the few teeth left to chew a daydreams
gristle"thup," Ann spits; her tongue distends a mouth collapsed and
creased like a jack-o-lanterns grimace once decay has drawn the pumpkins flesh
into sunken, shrunken folds, her cheekbones jutting over flaccid jowls like equidistant
gallows, framing nostrils flared from

sniffing

testing smells through upraised snout, nose
whiskers whistling with each inhalation: dust more dust and crotch-rot
(pugh); Anns genitalia have not suffered soap for many moons, an
erstwhile hygiene, with her menses, long-since stanched; there was no use for antisepsis
(even less for perspicacity)

feeling

toes, on topsoil, knead a score of intimate
impressions as Ann squats, discharges yellow dribble from her sagging center, age
afflicting every withered portion of a body bowed by Gravity, like a milkweed pod whose
shriveled husk will soon release its seed; Anns spirit rummages for the slightest
instigation to abandon that which owes its debt to dirt, to mud, to a quickening drop of
rain

envisioning

monkeys where there be none; Ann, of late,
indulges fantasies that the bane of her existence comes, by sundry means, to gloat, to
mark the passing of a their nemesis (had she mothered any offspring, suckled
something more portentous than infernal wails and woes); the sight of Geezer,
thereforeflanked by Messrs. See No, Hear No, Speak Nofails to shock a psyche
used to phantoms; Ann regards each wryly, lifts her hand as if to count the foursome
threesome twosome one so it was Do No Evil

gleaning

for the first time rapt, Self-absent,
disabused of isolation, put in touch with links re-coupled, with conglomerates recomposed;
an overlapping, intertwining, coalescing, supra-consciousness replacing what Ann
misperceived as boundaries Reason-drawn. How misinterpret mind and matter as estranged or
unrelated when the pores in touch with Earth and Sky are of the selfsame stuff? A
disembodied thought is neither Here nor There, a BLINK more viable

molting

metaphysically shedding that which keeps
the Real from Real, the skin revitalized as a membrane, less partition, more connection
between that without and that within, without/within congealed, upon a Sphere recycling
cycles like a chicken laying clutchesWhich came first; the hen, the
egg?by Chaos answered.